Historically, telecommunications have involved the transmission of voice and fax signals over a network dedicated to telecommunications, such as the Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) were are Private Brage Exchange (PBX). Similarly, data communications between computers have been historically transmitted on a dedicated data network, such a Local Area Network (LAN) or a Wide Area Network (WAN). Currently telecommunications and data transmissions are being merged into a integrated communication network using technology such as Voiceover Internet Protocol (VoIP). Since many LANs and WANs transmit computer data using Intranet Protocol (IP), VoIP uses this existing technology to transmit voice and fax signals by converting these signals into digital data and encapsulating the data for transmission over an IP network.
Traditional communication networks often support multipoint conferences between a number of participants using different communication devices. A multipoint conference unit (MCU) is used to couple these devices, which allows users from distributed geographic locations to participate in the conference. The conference may be audio only (e.g. teleconference) or may include video conferencing/broadcasting.
Conferencing systems generally deploy resource allocation and reclamation methods to improve the efficiency of resource utilization. That is, when participants leave a conference, their resources are returned to a pool of resources and become eligible for reuse by others. Some systems typically do not reclaim resources as participants leave a conference.